Dressed for excess

One girl's fashion is another girl's flashing. Vanessa E. Jones wonders if navels have a role in the workplace.

A taste war is being waged in classrooms, in offices and on city streets.

On one side are fashion-forward females - preteens to thirtysomethings - who proudly expose stomach, cleavage or leg. On the other: an audience that regards these women with amusement, lust or disgust.

The converts to this style are inspired by the fashion tastes of divas such as Beyonce Knowles, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who bare more skin each time they release a CD.

The reactions to their clothing choices are more than the usual generational tensions over what's hip. There is a genuine concern that propriety standards are horribly out of whack.

"There seems to be some confusion about what you wear when you go out on a Saturday night and what you wear to work and what you wear when you're trying to be taken seriously," says Tricia Rose, chairwoman of the American Studies department at the University of California. "The intense celebritisation of young women [singers] in the mass media is making those lines more confusing to women."

Images of Spears clad only in shorts on the cover of Rolling Stone don't help matters. Nor do the relentless waves of video vixens cavorting on TV in clothes that look like bathing suits.

Those who embrace sexier attire succumb to pop culture pressures that equate hipness with dressing like strippers or models, says Rose. But the choice of clothing may also be post-feminist expressions that show the peace some young women have made with their sexuality.

Rose doesn't have a problem with them walking around in scant amounts of fabric. Her concern runs deeper. "What I care about is how women are being empowered by these choices," she says. "I don't mind if they want to wear nothing. The question is, 'What impact is that having?"'

The trend is certainly having an impact in the workplace. Women are buying sexy clothes in the malls and wearing them to the office, says Karen Hinds, a business consultant who conducts seminars for summer interns on business etiquette, including how to dress.

At seminars and in office environments, Hinds has seen young women glide in wearing belly-baring tops, short skirts and "pants so tight you need pliers to take them off". Those clothing choices can hinder their ability to get ahead at work, she says.

One woman, a 30-year-old who works as an information technology manager, says her boss has asked her to "tone it down" and "dress accordingly" but she continues to wear short skirts and bare her midriff. In her mind, she is dressing accordingly; she points to the television series Ally McBeal, which inspired a generation of women to add mid-thigh-length skirts to their business wardrobe.

There are more dangerous connotations for younger women who wear these styles. Holly Poleet, 15, has a mature face and body which mean she's often mistaken for a 25-year-old, even when she wears her usual jeans, throwback jerseys or hoodies. She avoids bust-baring tops and leggy fashions which would attract unwanted attention from men.

But Poleet's eight-year-old sister, Amber, is too young to understand the harm of this dynamic. Amber will don a tank top, says Poleet, and tell her sister, "I'm sexy. I like this shirt on me. Don't I look nice? The boys like me when I dress like this."

Poleet's response: "That doesn't make you sexy. That's not the way to go."

The strength of the desire to dress like celebrities depends on how firmly parents guide their children.

Michelle Simpson, 20, learnt what clothes were appropriate for which occasions from her mother.

When Simpson wore something questionable, she says, "My mom was like, 'OK, I don't know about that outfit,' but it was never like, 'You are not leaving the house with that on!' How your parents teach you to be at home makes a difference. Like I'll wear my little outfit to the club, but I'm going to be mindful of how tasteful that look is, what kind of interpretation someone else is going to perceive from that as I wear it."

Other parents fail to tell their children where to draw the line. Poleet sometimes cares for an eight-year-old girl who adores Spears and tries to dress like her. Once she saw the little girl wearing a half-shirt and a skirt. Poleet made her take it off.